I also love all the Ew’s! King of Understatements, that’s Brent! And I agree, the ending of the story is more than worth the years of waiting for it! For some of us ADS fans that’s 30 years now. Yikes! Now I feel old! I was 16 when I first started reading ADS.

Of course I still love the book and love where it is going!I loved it when I was 16, all those years ago! In fact, I love it even more now, because as I’ve posted before, the current version is so very much better than the original! So much more richness, depth, and dimension to all the characters that was only hinted at way back when. I just like all the characters more, even the despicable ones like Niniri and Emeris. Well, maybe not Sere. She was so despicable it’s very hard to like her even a little bit.. But I DO like her better than 1983-1984 Sere.

All I have left from those days is # 8 and the introduction of ADS that was in the middle of one of the Elfquests. Think it was Elfquest 16? I compared those to their counterparts in my copy of Gathering. It’s not so much that the art changed because it didn’t really. There are differences is dialogue and characterization in the current version of ADS that I like much better.

Liana for one. Then she was the epitome of Angsty Teenage Drama Queen Who Thinks Of Nothing But BOYSBOYSBOYS When Not Being Dramatic. In the current ADS, she’s well, not like that. At all. Even I didn’t like her all that much and wanted to slap her upside her head, and I was a teen girl myself then! That a middle aged guy was doing some of the writing and editing then seems very clear to me with regards to Liana. That’s how she comes across to me, she’s a Thirtysomething Guy’s Take On 15 Year Old Girl.

Brent was an awful pig sometimes in that early version. Now he’s not. Rienrie was just pissed off all the time, This version he came off as whole lot more Hawkeye Pierce or BJ Hunnicutt or Charles Emerson Winchester than Frank Burns. Sere and Niniri then just came off as bored self absorbed arrogant upper class ladies, Not nearly so charmingly evil that they made me VERY SKEERDY the way they were in this version.

That’s interesting. I would agree with all your observations about characterization. I only kept about one or two lines of dialogue from the old version. I can’t completely hold my middle aged male editor responsible for the bad writing. Some of it was definitely mine. Almost everything from issue 4 up was mine, though heavily edited. I also did writing on all early issues, of course, but the editor threw it out and took sole credit for script, even though he was an editor. I still have my original documents.

The art changed 100%, though. As in every single page was completely redrawn. There really isn’t much resemblance at all.

I’d almost forgotten, but I actually used some of my pencil art from back when I was in high school, before I got grabbed up by that small press, and put that old art back in what is now the Image editions. The stuff I did when I was in school was better drawn than most of what eventually got published by the small press.

I should get my #8, the Elfquest, and my Gathering out. Been a couple months since I did the comparison. I wish that I could draw well, but the fact is I draw maybe about as well as my 3 year old nephew and much worse than the 9 year old one does. I guess I don’t pick up any better on the art differences between editions than I can draw.. Mostly the same events happen in each so that’s all I noticed. Oh the horror. The shame! 😛 😀 And I will admit to having a dislike of said middle age editor dating back to not long after ADS was gone from his control. I never got deeply in to sci-fi and fantasy fandom, but have several friends and relatives who did. A couple of them have had the displeasure of meeting the fellow in person over the years, and they didn’t think much of him. Pompous ass about was the kindest thing they had to say about him. Thus, I’m not prepared to cut him much slack. 😀

But I do appreciate your going over the work several times. That is a real compliment.

People have very different visual memories. I am used to it. And often people respond with emotional memory as much or more strongly than they do with visual memory. That’s actually a compliment to a creator, because it tells me the work had a solid impact on you when you first saw it. And people carry that power with them over the years. That can work for a creator, or against them. I am really fortunate that many of my readers have been very receptive to my later work.

No, I wouldn’t expect you to get into it! 😀 Not with what went down with all of that.

I was thrilled all to pieces to find that ADS had continued on and not died never to be seen again story incomplete some time when I was in my late teens or early 20’s. Think I stayed up half the night reading the web comic! Most of it was new to me since I’d stopped reading ADS decades ago, thinking it was gone forever. It was lots of fun, too, when I happened on a stray box that had a few old comics , # 8 among them, so I could compare it. I’d had the Elfquest all along, but finding the 8 gave me more to compare.

I’m really surprised, and very grateful to learn that many readers remember the book fondly from way back and are happy to see it again. I’d say most of the sales I made of the new GN in Boston were to people that had no idea I’d moved on since that old small press.

RabidEwok: I take it back. I had to look up something in one of the old issues, and it’s been over ten years since I bothered. Except when, you know, signing it for someone. I have not read them since 1980-something.

I have forgotten a lot, including the bizarrely over-written captions that had absolutely nothing to do with what was going on in the story, and that crowded the panels so badly there was almost no room for pictures. The writing was full of references to historical matters and trivia that did not advance the story in the least. It was embarrassing.

I do not use captions in A Distant Soil, so you may believe none written in the dumped version were written by me.

I wasn’t sure about the differences I *thought* existed between the current ADS and the first 1980’s one until I found that old Issue 8. Then I could compare and confirm they are different in they ways I thought they are. The USS Liana Minetti seemed sort of icky and and creepy at the time. Even to a young girl like I was then who had plenty of crushes on various and sundry older male fictional characters! Still makes me go all squicky now! Much prefer Minetti in the role of protective father figure police officer role to Liana in the current version.

Liana was supposed to have a sweet little girl hero worship and the way it was written didn’t make that come across. I don’t think that old series got my writer’s voice until later, after I got more editorial control over my own work. I am glad I threw out everything and started over. It was tainted in every way.